


we create our own demons

by andibeth82



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Comfort/Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Mission Fic, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-06
Updated: 2014-11-06
Packaged: 2018-02-24 08:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 20,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2575316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andibeth82/pseuds/andibeth82
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She reminds him of a fire burning angrily through ravaged villages, of a wolf on the run and a light in the darkness. She reminds him of anger and fear, of death and salvation all at once. She reminds him of Natasha, and, Clint realizes a few seconds later, that’s because she is.</p><p>[Post Winter Soldier, Clint and Natasha attempt to rebuild their lives without S.H.I.E.L.D. Meanwhile, Hydra has perfected Extremis and is using it to hone its deadliest weapon yet – clones of the Red Room’s greatest assassin, Natalia Romanova.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2014 Marvel Big Bang.
> 
> This fic was one of those stories in which the beginning came to me super easily, and then there were a lot of speed bumps for the rest of the ride. It was truly a labor of love, but ultimately, a story that I'm glad I was able to create.
> 
> As such, this would not have been completed without help from the following people: **bobsessive** , always my constant and cheerleader, who sat in a car during her birthday and helped me outline and brainstorm when I was fighting severe writer’s block; **enigma731** , who provided beta for this monster; and **fidesangelus** , who gave unintentional cheerleading during the times I really needed to be motivated. Finally, to give credit where credit is due, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention [this tumbr post](http://isjustprogress.tumblr.com/post/89687121881/a-sniper-takes-a-shot-at-natasha-romanoff-half-a), where the idea for this story initially sparked a long, long time ago (though the resulting spiral was all my own.)
> 
> All liberties taken with Natasha's backstory are my own and intentional.
> 
>  
> 
> Accompanying fanmix by the amazingly talented [branquignole](http://branquignole.livejournal.com/) can be found [here](http://ibangmyowndrum.tumblr.com/post/101923158752/a-wolf-on-the-run-a-clint-natasha-fanmix-for-the). Please check it out and leave her love!
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 

**PROLOGUE**

In Sao Paolo, a girl slits throats, her knife cutting into flesh like rotted fruit five days old, like browned spotted bananas, like sticks of butter left out to melt in the sun.

In Jakarta, a girl uses a garrote to bring down an entire boardroom of men in three piece suits, their blood splattering the walls of the windows that overlook the city, a red tinge that drips down glass panes and mingles with the summer sunset hues of gold and purple and pink.

And in Budapest, a girl crushes people like she’s a giant stepping on ants, their bones breaking like sticks beneath her fingers, their cries lost in the absence of breath, rivers of clear and white tainted crimson in the aftermath of summer rain.

 

 

 

Clint goes to Tony first without even thinking about it, doesn’t bother with the phone or even the computer, instead just uses the keycard he keeps inside his wallet (the one he always forgets about until he mistakenly grabs it instead of his Starbucks card.) He shows up in the lobby of Stark Tower with his recurve bow strapped to his back and his face set into a hard scowl, his eyebrows knitting together in concern.

“What do you mean, she’s gone?” Tony asks when he meets Clint downstairs, furrowing his own brow because it’s been at least five months since S.H.I.E.L.D. fell and another three since Clint has been seen at all, much less contacted anyone other than Natasha.

“I mean, she’s just gone,” Clint says, waving his hand around as if saying the words will induce some magician’s trick where she materializes out of thin air. “No note, no code, no nothing. Not even a goddamn necklace.”

Tony groans, rubbing a hand over his eyes as Clint talks.

“It’s Romanoff. Doesn’t she disappear like, once a week?”

“Not since Hydra,” Clint returns fiercely, feeling his temper flare, the muscles in his fingers twitching with the desire to grab an arrow and release it into his friend’s skull. “Don’t fuck with me, Stark. I’m telling you, I don’t know why or how, but she’s gone, and something’s not right.”

Tony sighs, and Clint watches as his eyes take in what he knows is his rigid form, the harried resting face that he’s been told makes him look like he belongs on the front of _America’s Most Wanted_ , his eyes widening slightly when he notices the bulge behind Clint’s jacket.

“Where are you going?” he asks, indicating the bow, and Clint snorts.

“Where do you think? If you don’t have anything for me to go off of, I’m not waiting around while you tinker some device into existence. Not with Hydra and –”

“Wait, wait,” Tony interrupts tiredly, holding up his hands. “Just…wait.” He takes a breath, leveling his gaze. “Come inside. I’ll help you, okay? See if we can find anything. Let’s at least examine our options, and then afterwards, you can decide if you wanna go all Hunger Games on the rest of the world.”

 

***

 

Despite what the papers say and what the gossip websites claim to see, Clint has only been in Stark Tower a handful of times, most times with Natasha and never by himself. They had discussed moving at one point, in the wake of New York, having lost all semblance of grounding in terms of where to put down their roots now that the whole world knew who they were and what they were capable of.

That they never got around to actually acting on that idea was partly because of Clint feeling the way he does now sitting awkwardly on an ostentatiously wide couch: Stark Tower, while rich in amenities, was too big and too lonely for the fact that their professions meant they would be spending a good amount of time apart once they got back into the field.

(The other part of it was the fact that Natasha actually agreed with his reasoning, which to this day, Clint still considers something of a victory given how often that happened for anything that wasn’t what movie to watch, or what Chinese take out place to order from.)

He presses a palm into one jittering leg while Tony creates maps out of thin air and words out of holograms, his fingers swiping through what Clint assumes are various files and reports, though he doesn’t bother to ask.

“Anything?”

“Be patient, I’m looking.” Tony’s lips are pursed in a half frown, a face that Clint recognizes as one that means he’s is actually putting effort into this rather than half-assing the whole thing just to shut him up. He falls silent again and concentrates on how to make his body stop shaking against its will, counting to five in his head the way Natasha taught him.

 _1._ He lets his breathing slow, his head clearing slightly. _2, 3, 4, 5…_

“When was the last time you saw her?” Tony asks distractedly, causing Clint to startle.

“Last night,” he says slowly, coming back to himself. “I mean, this morning. I had just gotten back from one of my assignments. Went over some stuff from my trip, fell asleep on the couch, and when I woke up, she was gone.”

“Just disappeared?” Tony asks again, and Clint tastes blood on the inside of his cheek.

“Yes,” he says, continuing the silent count in his head between breathing intervals. “Just – just gone.”

Tony sweeps through more holograms, before bringing his hands together and causing the shapes to disappear completely. The room suddenly becomes brighter, Clint thinks, or maybe it’s just because he’s managed to mute his panic enough that the world has shifted from black and white back into sharp color.

“Nothing on Hydra’s channels, if that makes you feel any better,” Tony says, getting up. “And nothing on any of the trackers Hill and I placed on those agents last week, either. Can’t trace her aliases anymore now that she’s got none.” He pauses. “I know you’re worried, okay? But maybe she disappeared for a reason, Barton. Maybe she’s fine. Hell, maybe she doesn’t _want_ to be found.”

“Natasha wouldn’t just _leave_ ,” Clint emphasizes again, bringing his fist down onto the couch cushion, the plush softness doing absolutely nothing to quell his need to unleash his anger. Tony sighs.

“No? Look around you Barton. The world’s changed.”

“Of course it has,” Clint snaps, getting to his feet. “I know damn well that the world has changed. I saw it firsthand, Stark. So forgive me for being more than a little worried when my partner, who hasn’t left my side without telling me in months, is all of a sudden missing with no explanation, in a world where my own men turned on me and almost left me for dead.”

Tony crosses his arms, and regards Clint with a stare that looks so Natasha it almost hurts. Dimly, he finds himself wondering for the first time if her babysitting mission so many years ago did the billionaire better than he would ever admit to.

“You finished with all of this?”

 _No_. Clint sets his jaw in a straight line. “Yes.”

Tony nods. “Then let’s go downstairs. There’s something I want you to see.”

 

***

 

Clint follows Tony into the elevator, his fingers jerking reflexively against his sides as they plunge towards the lower floors.

“I was waiting until I had more to go off of before I opened this can of worms,” he says, seemingly oblivious to Clint’s twitching limbs and the nervous vibe he knows that he’s giving off, as if it’s 2012 and he’s paranoid all over again. “But given that…reaction, I might as well clue you in now.”

“What do you mean?” Clint asks, his stomach dropping to his feet at the same time that the elevator lands with a dull jolt. Tony says nothing, and simply motions behind his head as he walks out into what Clint supposes has to be his designated workspace.

“Barton.”

Hill’s clipped tone catches him off guard and he whirls around, expecting to be met with his former supervisor’s stern gaze. Instead, he finds himself greeted with a hologram of her face, though the harsh look is still very much intact.

“What, you couldn’t beam yourself here in person?” Clint asks sarcastically, unable to stop himself. Hill rolls her eyes.

“I liked it better when I could threaten you with paperwork,” she replies dully. Despite the tension, Clint feels himself start to smile slightly because there’s a modicum of normalcy at the thought of Maria Hill wanting to relegate him to desk duty. Tony reappears in front of him with a thick folder, throwing it down in Clint’s face.

“Special delivery, bird boy.”

Clint frowns, picking up the file. “What’s this?”

“This…” Tony pauses. “This may be the reason why Romanoff is missing.”

Clint looks down, feeling vaguely sick. He opens the folder with shaking hands, his eyes falling first on the thick words scratched into the side of the manila – _Project Code Widow_ \- and then the black and white photo stapled to the front of what he soon realizes are dozens of write-ups and lab test results.

“Oh fuck,” he breathes, feeling his blood go cold at the realization of who the woman in the photo is. Despite the lack of color, her red hair sticks out like a beacon, and her facial structure is so familiar he knows he would be able to pinpoint her identity from miles away.

“We know Hydra is out there, and we know that they infiltrated S.H.I.E.L.D.,” says Tony, filling in the silence as Clint rifles through the rest of the contents. “We also know that we weren’t the only ones who they were working to take down.”

“We think that they’re planning to build from the ground up,” Hill supplies, as Clint raises his eyes in confusion. “I don’t know how much you remember from your research on the Red Room, Barton, but Russia’s Black Widow program was one of the most successful ways to covertly train dozens of highly advanced assassins.”

“Yeah, I remember,” says Clint slowly amidst a dull roaring in his ears that makes him feel like he’s listening to the whole conversation from underwater. He swallows down a mix of bile and rage. “How long has this been going on?”

“We don’t know,” Tony admits. “That’s what we were trying to figure out, before you came knocking down my very expensive door. This report is dated two months ago, but we have no idea how long they’ve been operating.”

“Well, find out,” Clint retorts irritably as his mind immediately flips to what Natasha had told him after they had reunited, how Hydra had been under their nose for over seventy years, how so many of the colleagues and friends they trusted were no longer loyal to S.H.I.E.L.D. “I mean, isn’t that your job?”

“Barton,” Hill intones warningly, and for a single moment Clint wishes that she wasn’t a hologram, because while he would feel quite silly yelling at a video call, he knows he would have no problem getting in her face if she was standing in front of him. He sighs, trying to keep himself calm.

“So what the hell does this mean?”

“It means that may not even be Natasha in the photo,” Hill continues. “Not if they’ve been successful in developing their assassins. But, so far as we can tell, they’d need a viable way to recreate her genes in order for something like this to be even halfway feasible.”

“So what?” Clint snaps the folder shut, unable to tamper his frustration any longer. “You think that they just took her? You think that I’d allow them to…to walk into my apartment while I was sleeping and just _take_ her while I had no goddamn idea?”

“No,” Hill says at the same time Tony shakes his head. “I have no idea how they could have done this. But I think what Stark said before is exactly right. She realized what was going on, got out before they could get to her, and as usual, decided to save your ass in the process. I know Romanoff, and I’m betting that she doesn’t want to be found – at least, not right now.”

Clint huffs out a breath in the wake of her words. “Bullshit,” he says roughly, rocking up to the balls of his feet before turning away, because none of it makes sense, not the file or the information or the fact that Natasha would just _leave_ , even if he’s known her to disappear in the past, even if her vanishing meant that she had the option to give one of them a chance at survival.

_“Never again,” she had whispered when he returned, when he held her in his arms, the stress of the press conference and destruction of the Helicarriers still weighing heavily on her soul and in the feel of her skin._

 

***

 

It’s mid-afternoon when Clint finally returns to his apartment, and when he opens the door he half expects to find her sitting on his couch the same way he had after he made it home for the first time. Her presence hadn’t surprised him, not really, and the only reason he hadn’t worried more when he saw the broken lock was because of the music playing from small iPod speakers, the soft classical violin medley that he knew was their code for “it’s me, I’m here, it’s safe.”

_“You look like shit.”_

_He did, he knew that much – bruised and broken and hurting and worse for the wear but he was_ alive _, and at that point, he had figured that small victory was worth it. She had helped him into bed and cleaned the rest of his injuries, taping bandages over torn skin while talking about Hydra, about Fury and Pierce and what he had already suspected from his own experiences. She had named people like Senator Stern and Jasper Sitwell, and used words like “compromised” and “neutralized” and “traitorous,” and Clint had felt confused and annoyed and sick at what it all meant._

_“It means that we’re on our own. You know that,” she’d said a little impatiently._

_“But you’re okay, right?” he had asked, searching her face, brushing off her hand as she tried to clean blood out of one of his deeper cuts. “You’re okay?”_

_“Clint. I’m fine.”_

_He could tell it wasn’t exactly the truth because there was something in her eyes that looked tired, defeated, and a little lost. He knew better than to press further, though, and so he didn’t bother._

_“I’m here, now, and you’re safe. You can relax.”_

Except he wasn’t safe, not really, not with the world falling apart at his feet. Natasha made him feel more secure, clinging to his arm at night when the shadows on the wall could be anything besides harmless shapes, but then again, she always had. It’s part of the reason he suspects he’d fallen apart so quickly when he went off on his own following Hydra leads, when he knew he had nothing tangible to hold onto as everything around him went to shit.

Clint blinks his thoughts into nothingness, rubbing at his eyes as he sits down on the couch. Unearthing the folder from his jacket, he opens it up again and nearly misses the small object that slides out from between the folds of the dossier and onto the floor.

He picks it up slowly, his eyes traveling curiously over the dark, slender stick. It’s the smallest and most discreet flash drive he’s ever seen, the kind of tech Clint immediately knows only Stark Industries could own or design. He turns it over in his hands a few more times before getting up and moving to the bedroom.

Grabbing his laptop from a underneath a pile of dirty clothes, he sits down on the bed and sticks the drive into the side of the USB port, his breath catching in his throat as he waits for something to materialize. At first, there’s nothing, and Clint wonders if the whole thing is a joke, if maybe Tony is messing with his head after all. Eventually, however, images begin to show up on the screen, grainy black and white captures that look like they’ve been imported from a bad surveillance tape.

Clint brings his laptop closer, bending into the screen. There’s a room and there are people talking in a language he can’t understand, but he discerns enough from the visuals to know what he’s watching, the terrified cries of women he can’t quite see but can certainly hear, their screams taking over as a white-hot flash sears the picture, rendering any visuals useless.

There’s a shift, then, and Clint finds himself on the street corner of what he supposes has to be some country he’s never set foot in, watching as a woman dressed in all black takes out a number of individuals with breathtaking force and unimaginable agility. She’s a blur across the distorted monitor but her movements are sharp and familiar, and Clint finds himself transfixed, barely breathing as he watches her slit the throat of the last man before looking up, lips splitting apart in a cold, emotionless grin.

She reminds him of a fire burning angrily through ravaged villages, of a wolf on the run and a light in the darkness. She reminds him of anger and fear, of death and salvation all at once.

She reminds him of Natasha, and, Clint realizes a few seconds later, that’s because she _is_.

 

***

 

This time, he calls Tony instead of storming over to the Tower, finally making use of the burner phone that Natasha had forced him to start carrying around in her increasing paranoia after the events of a few months ago.

“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” he asks, not even bothering to reference the flash drive and when he hears Tony sigh, he knows he doesn’t have to.

“Jesus, Barton. Are you that dumb? What do you think would’ve happened if I had given that thing to you while Hill was watching?”

Clint takes a breath, because he knows damn well what would’ve happened, and he knows that Tony is right. There’s no doubt in his mind that Hill understood how important it was for him to find Natasha, but at the same time, he also knows that it would be her duty as a friend and as a former supervisor to talk him out of his inevitable rescue mission.

“Yeah, well.” He pauses. “Did you watch it?”

“Yes,” Tony replies after a long beat, and Clint believes him without thinking about it. “Only enough to know what you would be reacting to. And what Hill would’ve said if she had known.”

Clint nods, forgetting for a moment that Tony can’t see him, and realizing for the first time how much he’s going to potentially be on his own. In the old days, before all of this, Hill would’ve been the first call – Coulson, too, and maybe Fury. And then after that, Clint would’ve marched straight down to headquarters and demanded access to a quinjet, as well as any other resources he could get his hands on.

But there was no Fury now – not really. There was no Coulson, either, and no headquarters or quinjets or other agents for support. There wasn’t even Hill, not in the way there used to be. Clint sighs as he lets his eyes travel around his apartment.

“You gonna need us?” Tony asks after a beat, as if reading Clint’s mind. “When you go off on this whole rescue mission, I mean. Because it’s been awhile, and I could use an adventure.”

Clint laughs slightly, surprising himself with the reaction. “Maybe,” he says truthfully, before turning off the phone and tossing it onto the bed. It would be stupid to say no, to rescind the offer of any kind of trustworthy back up. But Clint also knows that, like so many years ago, this is something he needs to do on his own.

“I’m gonna bring you back,” he murmurs to himself as he stares at the bed, the imprint of Natasha’s head on the pillow still painstakingly visible in the front of his mind.


	2. Chapter 2

**_One Week Ago_ **

Natasha Romanoff hasn’t seen Yelena Belova in almost nineteen years.

She looks the same, mostly – same blonde hair and same thin face, same white scar at the base of her lip and same jagged line stretching down the side of her neck, remnants of combat lessons lost and of Natasha’s own hand. She looks the same, _mostly_ , except for the fact that instead of threadbare clothing, she’s wearing a grey and black business suit, with her hair done up in intricate pin curls and powder dotting the freckles across her upturned nose.

She looks the same, mostly. Still, Natasha Romanoff hasn’t seen Yelena Belova in almost nineteen years, and so when she shows up in the middle of a busy café in Paris where Natasha is running detail on yet another possible Hydra rat, when she drops herself into the previously unoccupied chair, Natasha thinks that she might have stepped into some sort of fever dream.

“To what do I owe this pleasure?” she intones emotionlessly, keeping her face passive as Yelena removes her sunglasses. One hand snakes under the tablecloth where her fingers work their way towards the pocketknife hidden inside her belt, and Yelena smiles, her eyes darting at the ground.

“Stand down, Natalia.”

“It’s Natasha now,” she replies tightly as she shakes out her hair, wrapping her fingers around the knife’s smooth curve. Yelena raises an eyebrow, and reaches across the table for Natasha’s cup, lifting it to her lips with delicate fingers.

“They said you defected. That you became a liability. Befriended an American, even.” She pauses, sipping the espresso, before putting it down in front of her. “They did not say you sacrificed your heritage.”

“I didn’t sacrifice anything,” Natasha replies evenly, letting the silence settle between them as she pulls her hand back and lays it on the table, a show of unequivocal surrender and trust. “Why are you here, Yelena? Why now?”

“Why not?” Yelena laughs darkly. “The world is not the place we were promised it would be when we were sent out all those years ago, is it?”

Natasha takes a breath, meeting her eyes. “We chose our differences,” she says quietly. “You chose to stay with Ivan.”

“Correction: you chose to _let_ me stay with Ivan,” Yelena replies lightly, pinching a napkin between her fingers with the same deftness that Natasha remembers seeing when she would crush someone’s eyeball with her bare hands. “Tell me, how is it being reformed, Natalia? How long did you let yourself believe you were doing anything different than what you were trained to do?”

Natasha considers her words, the weight behind what she’s conveniently not saying, and feels her eyes darken. “So you’re working for Hydra.”

“Goodness, no.” Yelena smirks. “Though, I cannot lie in saying that we helped them to achieve what they couldn’t with their resources alone. Surely you know that seventy years of infiltration in a visible security network doesn’t happen overnight.”

“Neither does a Red Room graduate,” Natasha returns and Yelena startles at that but just slightly, in a way that Natasha knows most other people would miss.

“Still the same, sharp Natalia,” Yelena murmurs, leaning forward. “Do you remember when you gave me this scar, or have you forgotten that, as well?”

Natasha curls her lips. “How could I forget?” she asks bitterly, her eyes tracing a line of memory around the lightened mark, the way she had split the skin by using only her fingernails, and how it had felt good and real to have the blood of her own friend’s body running down her hand. “Don’t think I couldn’t re-open those wounds in a second, Yelena.”

The other woman smiles thinly, reaching into the bag by her feet and shoving a manila folder across the table. “It would seem you might not want to do that.”

The file is one that looks like it’s been through hell and more than a few scuffles, and Natasha looks down as Yelena pushes it towards her.

“What’s this?”

“A present from the homeland,” Yelena says casually, though Natasha can tell by her tone that there’s nothing casual about whatever’s inside. She flips it open, only catching her reaction at the last possible second, and as she reads she can feel the other woman studying her face. “I thought you would want to know.”

Natasha swallows as she rifles through the pages, before closing it shut and shoving it back across the table.

“Why?” she asks again, and Yelena snorts.

“Don’t tell me you’ve gone soft, Romanova. The Red Room’s best graduate, the most dedicated assassin the world has ever seen, the only person to take down Drakov and live to tell about it…and you want to know why?” She taps her fingers against the table, as if trying to signal a Morse code, the way Natasha remembers they used to do when they were separated in quarters and unable to communicate except through thin walls that kept their secrets at bay.

“You _know_ why.”

Natasha says nothing, keeping her gaze down, and out of the corner of her eye she sees Yelena smooth down her skirt.

“What else do you know?” she asks finally, swallowing down her emotions. She senses Yelena can tell what she’s feeling, but to her credit, the other woman doesn’t say anything.

“Nothing,” she says, signaling for the check, and taking out her wallet. “That’s the truth. I came to you to warn you.” Yelena slides a green American Express card into the black wallet and passes it off with a smile to the server, who returns it promptly.

“Hell of a time to resurface,” Natasha mutters, still feeling on edge. Yelena smiles, signing her name with a flourish, and then turns the check over so she can scribble on the back.

“Thank you for letting me take care of your tea, Natalia,” she says as she pushes the thin receipt across the table. Natasha catches the look in her eye and takes it slowly, her eyes working over the handwriting on the back of the piece of paper.

_The man with the hat._

Natasha feels her insides go cold as she crumples the paper tightly in her palm. “You’re welcome,” she manages. Yelena nods.

“This is likely the last you’ll see of me,” she says after a moment, folding her napkin. “I’m going underground until it all blows over. If it ever does, that is.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Natasha replies bitterly watching Yelena stand up. She moves forward, putting one hand on Natasha’s shoulder.

“Stay sharp, Natalia. You were born for this.”

Natasha doesn’t answer, and waits until she’s sure she’s gotten a safe enough distance away before daring to open the file again, the hot sun beating down on her back and setting fire to her scalp with the same red heat as her newly dyed hair.

 

***

 

_The man with the hat._

He was a legend, mostly, according to the stories Natasha knew. A ghost like the asset that they called the Winter Soldier, except Natasha knew that the Winter Soldier was real. The Winter Soldier trained the Widows, but Mikhail was the man behind the curtain.

The few that did see him never returned. There were rumors of death, of being sold to other countries and other places, and it was Yelena who had gotten sold to him the day that it was supposed to be Natasha. It wasn’t Natasha, because the Winter Soldier had wanted Natasha – and whatever the asset wanted, the asset got. It was also the last she’d heard from her friend, aside from stories whispered within channels throughout the years, until she had gotten word at some point throughout her time at S.H.I.E.L.D. that Yelena had survived and gotten out, or whatever “gotten out” had meant for her, and Natasha had never tried to investigate because that was a part of her life she didn’t entirely want to revisit.

When Natasha returns home from Paris, she checks in to find that Clint’s still away on his weeklong Prague expedition to hunt down his own leads to Hydra trails. It had unnerved her at first, agreeing to take on separate missions when there were so many threats dancing around in the shadows, but Clint had assured her that he was okay with working on his own so long as they communicated enough to satisfy each other’s unspoken anxieties. Still, the months of coming and going and learning how to be diligent without someone at her back had taken time to get used to, and she didn’t have to wonder if for him, it had been the same.

She takes advantage of the her solitude to uncover and then loot through a small nondescript bag filled with items she hasn’t used in years, before stepping outside and hailing a cab into Manhattan, sitting nervously through rush hour traffic and finally exiting at the corner of Broome and Grande in Little Italy. The light dusk and crowded streets provide an easy cover as she steps out of the cab, inconspicuously darting into an alleyway behind a busy restaurant and pressing herself against the back wall. Natasha waits in silence, still and barely breathing, until she hears someone approach her from behind, barely audible footsteps that are betrayed only by the voice materializing out of thin air.

“Natalia.”

“Viktor,” she says quietly, turning around. “I wasn’t sure if you would come.”

Viktor smiles, showing crooked, yellowed teeth illuminated against a leering grin. “The years may not have been kind to me, but I cannot resist the temptation of an old enemy,” he says, one hand snaking around her back. Natasha moves quickly, grabbing his hand and twisting it behind his head while pushing her arm up against his throat, feeling the man’s panic as her elbow cuts into the space of his windpipe.

“We are not playing games,” Natasha says under her breath, though her voice is sharp enough to cut through steel. Viktor struggles, attempting to sputter in protest, and Natasha only tightens her grip, which causes him to squirm harder. She watches carefully, the way his face reddens and his eyes begin to grow wider.

“I have a cyanide pill and I will force it into your mouth right now unless you agree to tell me everything I need to know,” she continues. “And don’t think you can call my bluff. You know what I’m capable of.”

There’s a moment of silence while the man continues to fight her hold, and Natasha brings her opposite arm towards him, opening her palm and pressing the pill to his lips. At Viktor’s moan and strangled coughs she lets go slowly, allowing him to stumble forward onto the pavement with loud gasps.

“What do you want?” he asks hoarsely when he regains his breath, glaring up at her from where he’s hunched against the dirty ground. Natasha moves forward deliberately, so that both of them are blocked from the view of any potential onlookers.

“Information,” she says, crouching down. “I want to know where to find Mikhail.”

Viktor’s eyebrows shoot up and he looks a cross between terrified and surprised. “How would I know where to find Mikhail? I haven’t seen him for years.”

“Try again,” says Natasha, holding up the pill, and Viktor shakes his head defiantly.

“I mean it. I haven’t seen him for years.”

“But you _do_ know where he is,” Natasha presses, her tone unfailingly steady, and when there’s no reply she drags him up by one arm, shoving her hand against his mouth.

“Tell me where he is,” Natasha repeats in a hard voice, and when Viktor tries to speak she deftly slips the small capsule between his lips.

“In Mexico City, he’s in Mexico City,” Viktor bursts out, wrenching away from her grasp and spitting the pill onto the ground, his body heaving. Natasha leans over casually to pick it up, twirling it between her fingers before advancing again, this time slightly slower.

“Is that all?”

“He’s been hiding there for years,” Viktor continues, shying away. “In an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of the city. I haven’t talked to him…no one has…but the last contact I had placed him there and as far as I know, he hasn’t moved for years.” He coughs again, eyeing her form, holding up one hand. “Jesus, Natalia.”

Natasha stays silent, and regards him carefully with a long look.

“And what do you know about the Widow Program?”

Viktor blanches again, and the look is so genuine that Natasha knows he can’t pretend otherwise.

“How –”

“What do you know about the Widow Program?” she asks again, watching as his eyes dart nervously towards the busy street.

“Alexandria,” he says shakily, after a long pause. “That’s all I know, that’s all they told me when I was supposed to recruit people. Bring them to Alexandria. I _swear_ , that’s all I was told.”

Natasha stares at his face, the long lines creasing into worry along his mouth where his lips have been pulled taut, before delivering a sharp blow to the space just underneath his temple.

He falls back, crumpling easily, and Natasha doesn’t hesitate before taking out a small cloth and a bottle of chloroform. Dampening the wool, she presses it over his nose and mouth and counts for a full minute, before removing the towel and discarding it in a nearby dumpster.

She takes one last look at Viktor’s immobile form before smoothing down her clothes, and waits what she thinks is a comfortable amount of time before exiting the alleyway. When she gets back to the apartment, she finds a text from Clint saying that his mission was a bust, that his leads were bogus, and that he’s coming home earlier than usual.

Natasha lets him find comfort in her touch when he walks in the door, clearly tired and more run down than she knows he’ll admit to, and when he falls asleep against her she quietly takes advantage of his presence before pulling a blanket tighter around his body, brushing a kiss against his hairline.

She leaves before he wakes up the next morning.

 

***

 

As Natasha steps off the plane at Benito Juárez International, she feels a tinge of anxiety mixed with a slight sense of relief. It could be worse, she knows – much worse. She could be flying to Russia or to the Middle East, or halfway across the country to somewhere that she’s only been once and doesn’t remember clearly. Mexico City isn’t that far by any stretch of imagination, and she’s been there enough times to have a familiarity that makes her comfortable enough with her surroundings, despite the situation.

Natasha tries to settle the apprehension she feels growing in the pit of her stomach as she hails a cab at the airport curb and starts her trek into the city, approximating the time difference from her watch, imagining Clint’s reaction as he gets up and finds her gone. He’ll go to Tony first, she thinks – hopes, knows that there’s no one in the immediate vicinity who he would trust more than that right now. She’d stopped by Stark Tower on the way to the airport to casually drop off Yelena’s folder, asking him to take a look and hoping he could do with it what she couldn’t, and thankfully, Tony hadn’t bothered to care about where she planned to go after her errand.

 _He’s in good hands_ , she reminds herself as the cab speeds along the highway, pressing her palm to the window, swallowing down the hurt. No matter what she tells herself, it feels too much like Fury, too much like a violation to their relationship that she would just up and leave him without telling anyone. Natasha sucks in a breath and shakes the thought from her mind with the resolve that it’s a price she needs to pay to keep Clint safe – at least for now.

When she’s dropped off at a small hotel in a more barren looking part of town, she changes out of her travel clothes and outfits herself with the appropriate weapons she’s managed to collect from home before setting off on foot to the area that Viktor had mentioned. It’s not hard to find the warehouse as described, and as Natasha slips into one of the broken entrances on the side, hidden by overgrown shrubbery, she wonders why Mikhail had decided to more or less hide in plain sight.

Then again, he had never been one for logic, not even when he was in the Red Room.

Natasha steps carefully through the deserted complex, her gun by her cheek, her breath coming in quiet, steady puffs. She makes it through two large rooms before she turns the corner into a third, feeling hard metal come into contact with the back of her head.

“Why are you here?”

Natasha swallows down her fear and turns slowly, against the gun’s hold.

“Why are you?”

Something akin to surprise that registers in the man’s eyes when their faces meet, and Natasha holds his stare, willing herself not to break. After a moment, she watches his lips fold into a small grin.

“Madame Natalia Alianovna,” he says finally, lowering his weapon. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

“I never said it was a pleasure,” Natasha says, keeping her guard intact, one hand close to her waist so that she can still pull her knife if necessary. The man laughs, the sound echoing off the walls of the hollow room.

“Touché. I suppose that comes with the territory now that you are, what? American?”

Natasha doesn’t respond, shifting her feet as the tension grows between them. “I can break you,” she says quietly, avoiding his question. “I was never afraid of you, Mikhail.” It’s a half-lie, a bluff that she knows he could call her out on, and she holds his gaze as he continues to stare at her.

“No, you were not,” he agrees a little thoughtfully. “Then again, few are trained by the Winter Soldier and live to tell the tale. Unless they are not afraid.” He moves away towards a table at the far end of the room and sits down, beckoning to her. “Come sit. Have a chat with me.”

Natasha follows cautiously, her mind working feverishly to calculate the many ways she can react if she needs to protect herself, the structure of the room and the points of entrance and exits. Lowering herself into the opposite chair, she keeps her hands in her lap even as he lays his gun across the table, a safe distance from his reach.

“I want to know what you’re doing with the Widow program,” Natasha says bluntly, her voice hard. Mikhail purses his lips.

“I will refrain from asking how you know about all of this, and instead assure you that I’m not actually doing anything,” he says, a sly smile shadowing his features. “We are merely…improving our system.”

“By creating clones,” Natasha says, her voice flat, her feet pressing into the floor in a combination of nerves and rage. Mikhail smiles a little wider.

“The technology, Natalia! The technology that years ago would have been impossible, thanks to Hydra! It has been glorious for us.”

Natasha ignores the glee of the man’s voice, the way his arms wave towards the empty room. “How are you making them?”

“How are we making you?” Mikhail asks, and Natasha has to stop herself from flinging her chair across the room. Instead, she crosses her legs demurely and takes a slow, long breath, allowing her anxiety to lessen. Mikhail gets up and Natasha immediately flinches but he doesn’t advance, instead moves to stand a few paces away, straight and rigid.

“I ask, Natalia. Have you ever heard of Extremis?”

“Yes,” Natasha says curtly. “I know what it does.”

“I don’t think that you do,” Mikhail says conversationally. “You see, what you know of Extremis is not what you think.”

“Then enlighten me,” Natasha responds, her patience waning, as Mikhail smiles again.

“Extremis no longer regenerates limbs, nor does it simply make you infallible.” He snaps his fingers. “Thanks to the hard work of scientists throughout the years, we have found that the empty slot in your brain can be upgraded more than we previously suspected. By administering the right amount of Extremis, we can control your features. Your actions.”

“But you’re still making somebody a weapon,” Natasha interrupts. “You’re making _me_ a weapon.”

“Do you not see, Natalia?” Mikhail turns his palms out. “You were always a weapon. We are just learning how to use you to your full advantage.” He tilts his head slightly. “I suppose I should thank you for your service to your country for so many years.”

Natasha sees the silver flash of the knife out of her peripheral vision and reacts instinctively; twisting to the side and pulling her own blade as she throws a roundhouse kick in his direction. Her aim misses, but just barely – she can feel the brush of Mikhail’s arm as she steadies herself, and ducks once more as his fist attempts to align with the side of her head.

She underestimates her trajectory in relation to the floor and hits the ground hard, feeling the pain of bruises materialize on her legs and on her side. He’s on top of her before she can think to move, pressing his blade to her throat, and she blocks it with one arm, pushing up against his grip. One hand scrabbles for the small handgun concealed in the back of her pants and she manages to get a hold just as she feels the blade of the knife start to cut into her skin, swinging her arm up and using all her strength to knock the gun into the side of his head.

Mikhail falls back with a grunt and Natasha rolls over on top of him, kicking the knife out of his hand, one knee pressing into his groin with her gun pointed directly between his eyes.

“He taught you well,” Mikhail says, spitting blood. Natasha shakes her head.

“I taught myself,” she says, knocking the gun into his head again. This time, he falls slack underneath her.

 

***

 

Natasha chooses Boston, the last of her safe houses that she knows hasn’t yet been compromised and the one where she figures most people won’t bother to actively look for her. She laughs a little bit as she thinks about it, knowing it’s a hiding space about as bold as Mikhail holing himself up in the middle of the city, inviting his past to find him. But she knows she can’t go far, not when she still needs and wants to be close to Clint.

_“No running off and leaving me like you did after New York, you promise?”_

_“Of course I promise.”_

Natasha swallows down the pain of the memory, willing his voice out of her mind. It was, realistically, the worst thing she could have done in the wake of what they had just been through. But they were both still healing, and it would have been the last thing he needed with trying to come down from Hydra’s hold, not to mention the still-festering vestiges of Loki’s mind control, the ones that he kept insisting didn’t exist, even when she knew they did.

She had vowed not to leave him, but she had also vowed that he would be safe, and that she would protect him. It was a promise she was determined to keep, even if the method was an unorthodox one.

Natasha does a requisite search for bugs before dropping her bag on the ground, stretching out on the bed and removing the few extra weapons from her clothes, placing them all within arms reach. The pocketknife in her boot digs painfully into her ankle as she curls her knee forward but she breathes through the discomfort, allowing some of the tension to drain from her body as she does so.

He’ll come looking. She knows he will. She’s left a trail that she hopes will be enough to get him to start looking sooner rather than later, but waiting has never been her strong suit when it came to making sure that one of them was okay. Natasha pulls out her burner phone, her fingers hovering over the buttons before she moves them away, shoving the phone down by her side.

 _Not yet_.

She curls up into a ball, senses still high on alert, and tries to will herself to sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

The newspaper arrives early enough to let him know that he probably shouldn’t even be up.

Granted, five in the morning is not exactly the most desirable time to be waking, even though Clint has spent most of his life fielding wake-up calls before the sun and days with less than four hours of sleep. But after tossing and turning most of the night and falling asleep for only hour intervals, the sight of dawn starting to peek through the dark is enough to get him out of bed and into the kitchen, where he more or less stumbles into the chair while downing coffee straight from the pot. If Natasha was here, he knows she would scold him for it.

But Natasha isn’t here, and he has no goddamn idea where she is, and…Clint rubs his hand over his face while stifling a yawn, deciding that he needs more caffeine in order to fully deal with whatever the hell she’s doing to him.

He picks up the newspaper when he feels alert enough, kicking through a pile of old arrows littering the floor (and she would yell at him for that, too) before moving to the couch, throwing the rolled up pages across his lap with half-hearted force. After another gulp of coffee, he unravels the paper, letting his eyes lazily scan the front page until they dart to the small yellow sticker in the upper section, the one that looks suspiciously like a change of address label.

Clint hasn’t changed his address on this apartment since at least the early 90’s.

He sits up immediately, senses suddenly snapping into alertness, setting the pot firmly on the floor as he hurries back to the kitchen. Grabbing a pen, he flips through the pages until he gets to the back of the Lifestyle section, where he spreads his hands out over the crossword puzzle, smoothing down the thin crinkled paper.

He lets his pen travel to the column on the left until he finds 18 down, allowing the ballpoint settle on the clue.

_Revolutionary_ _War._

He counts out the boxes before filling in the letters, his pen carefully moving across the page. When he’s done, he finds 6 across.

 _Freedom Trail_.

He fills in the word “Boston” without even counting the letters and then throws the pen down onto the table, grabbing the paper and shoving it into his pocket. He’s out the door before he’s properly dressed, pulling on his jacket before he even gets down the stairs.

 

***

 

“I need a car.”

“Are you kidding me?”

Tony looks like he’s just been blindsided, which Clint considers to be a pretty big deal given the fact that he knows there are worse things that have made the billionaire’s head spin recently. Clint crosses his arms in silent response, and Tony shakes his head.

“I asked you if you needed help. I was all ready to get some use out of new toys, and instead you come asking me about my _car_?”

Clint groans. “Come on, Stark. Do you really want to give me your suit?”

Tony chews on that longer than Clint thinks should really be necessary, and finally makes a grudging noise. “Point taken.”

“Just give me a car, and I promise I’ll stay out of your hair.”

“Shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep in this line of work,” Tony warns tiredly, but he gets up from his chair and starts to move towards his work desk, rummaging through some odds and ends before he throws a key towards him. Clint catches it easily with one hand.

“2008 Audi R8, top speed of 187 miles per hour, V8 engine. Drives like a dream.” He pauses, grinning tightly. “You ruin her, and I’ll kill you.”

Clint nods his thanks and approval, pocketing the key and letting his gaze trail across the garage.

“Guess this means I can’t come.”

Clint sighs out his response. “Fraid the road trip teamwork thing is off the table for now. At least until I can figure out what’s going on.”

“And you know what that is?”

Clint shakes his head, thinking of the crossword puzzle, and of Natasha’s sudden departure. “I know a little. But not all of it.” He drops his voice, finding Tony’s eyes.

“Let’s just hope that can be enough until we get ourselves back on track.”

 

***

 

New York to Boston is, by Clint’s standards, not a terribly long trip and also one that he’s done numerous times – both with Natasha and without. Still, there’s a palpable sense of urgency that sits in the pit of his stomach, one that eats away at his insides making him anxious and jumpy even when he guns the car past 100.

He makes it two hours in before he has to stop on the side of the road for a twenty-minute nap, his senses in overdrive from both worry and lack of sleep. When he finally does make it past the Massachusetts border, pulling in at a Motel Six on the side of the highway, his right hip is aching with discomfort and he’s pretty sure he’s heard every single Top 40 song at least three times over.

He pays for the cheap room in cash and then crawls into the musty bed, all but collapsing onto the terribly patterned covers in a broken sleep that leaves him with dreams of Natasha’s face, her eyes wild and her hands bloodied, his body immobile as if he’s being controlled by Loki all over again. When his cell phone jolts him back into reality with a 6 AM alarm, he steals a few extra pastries and a coffee from the continental breakfast station before starting up the car again, making a path towards the city.

 

***

 

It’s late afternoon when he pulls into the back of a Whole Foods parking lot, killing the engine and getting out to stretch his legs. Clint takes a moment to survey the scene, the seemingly oblivious shoppers and the line of cars zipping along the street, rubbing his eyes as he does so. Despite not being here for at least four years, everything looks just familiar enough to jog his memory, and as he moves through some of the side streets, he hopes to god his instincts are right.

He keeps his gaze low as he wanders through the back sidewalks, the dark blue Red Sox baseball cap he had procured at the earlier rest stop pulled low over his eyes, before slipping into one of the more crowded areas and making his way towards one of the small houses that, by its outward appearance, seems otherwise shut up and desolate. He tries the door, finding it unsurprisingly locked, but manages to remember where the spare key is normally stashed, fishing out the green plastic children’s egg from beneath the overgrown bushes, where it’s been pushed almost under the foundation.

Clint jiggles the key into the lock, lifting his gun as he steps inside. The lights are off, the room bathed only by the natural light coming through the windows, and before he sees her he thinks that maybe he’s misjudged the situation after all. She’s sitting up straight against the bed, her trademark glock trained in his direction, and despite the fact he knows (hopes) she wouldn’t shoot, he doesn’t put his own gun down.

“I gave you three days.”

“And I found you in two. What does that say?”

Natasha clicks off her safety, not moving from her spot on the bed. “That you miss me?”

Clint counts to five in his head, suppressing the urge to scream now that he’s standing in front of her, now that he knows she’s alive and here and apparently hiding out in someplace they both haven’t been for years. “Where the _fuck_ did you go?”

“How did you find me?” she asks in return, her voice level, and he blows out a breath when he realizes the careful tone of her question.

“Christ, Natasha. I’m not a goddamn Hydra agent.”

“I didn’t say you were,” Natasha responds evenly. “I asked you to tell me how you found me.”

Clint lowers his gun, as if trying to make a show of surrender. “The newspaper. The crossword, the way we used to contact each other in the past when our channels were compromised. 18 down, 6 across. Boston, Massachusetts.”

Natasha remains still, her upper lip twitching. “That still doesn’t explain two days,” she continues, and he drops his gun completely, letting it clatter loudly to the floor.

“Yeah, well. I was gonna give myself an extra day to figure it out. But then I remembered you have a safe house in Boston, the one we went to together because we needed to lie low before coming home.” As if to make a point, his eyes trail to the spot on the wall next to her, what he hopes should be enough and what he can tell is not.

“Prove it.”

Clint opens his mouth and then promptly closes it. “Natasha…”

“I said, prove it.”

Clint sighs, biting his lip. “December 14, 2009. It was sleeting and I couldn’t get my balance because everything had frozen over. Cold as fuck. I fractured my wrist trying to open the door because you were too sick to walk and then I held you, in this bed, until we could leave for help.” He stops, breathing heavily. “It was also the first time that you said you loved me. Out loud, that is.”

She doesn’t answer and he continues to hold her gaze as she gets up off the bed and steps closer, until she’s right up in his face, until he can see the way her eyes are glazed over, the way she’s desperately trying to hold back tears.

“Natasha?”

“Fuck you,” she says as she steps into his arms and her tone is sharp but her voice is wavering, and he can tell that she’s relaxing, and the show of extreme vulnerability is almost enough to forgive her for skipping out on him without an explanation.

“Yeah, well.” He fights to keep his own voice steady, his hand finding her hair, feeling his own eyes water as he tangles his fingers in red tresses. “Fuck you, too.”

 

***

 

Two hours later, after Clint has showered and changed and they’re sitting at the kitchen table feeling slightly more normal but no less paranoid, he finally breaks his silence.

“How long did you know?”

Natasha plays with her tea bag, moving it around in one of the two mugs that sits on the table. “Not that much before you,” she admits quietly. “I was in Paris, on that ops assignment a few weeks ago, and I got a…I guess you could call it an unexpected visit.” She swallows, still seeing Yelena’s thin face in her vision, and Clint raises his eyebrows in silent question.

“My friend,” Natasha continues. “One of my old mentors from the Red Room, Yelena. She came to me and warned me that they were making clones. That they were using them to kill the people that Hydra couldn’t reach. Like the Widow Program all over again, except this time, instead of other girls there’s just one girl.” Natasha swallows hard. “Me.”

Clint digs his hands into his knees as her voice drops. “Did she tell you anything else?”

“No,” Natasha says, raising her head, and in the light from the window he can see the tired lines on her face. “Just what was going on. The rest I…found out on my own.”

Clint doesn’t miss the hesitancy masking her tone. “I need to know where you went,” he says suddenly, reaching across the table and taking her free hand. He squeezes it gently, as if trying to make the gesture something of a comfort. “Natasha, I need to know all of it.”

She eyes him warily, and he notices then that she looks a little more alert than she had at the time of his arrival. He doesn’t have to wonder if her mind and body worked the same way as his – that after all these years, they were so in tune that they couldn’t rest unless they knew the other was okay.

“I’ll tell you,” she agrees. “I promise, I’ll explain it all, I just…I needed to do this on my own.”

Clint withdraws his hand, dropping it by his side. “Why?” he asks, unable to help the confusion and sadness that he knows shadows his face, the disappointment that he feels creeping into his tone. “Christ, I thought we were past this, Nat. New York, DC…we don’t _do_ this shit anymore.”

“It’s not that simple,” she replies instantly, yanking backwards in her chair. “What I’m dealing with – what _we’re_ dealing with, it’s not safe. If I had told you where I was going, if there was a chance you could’ve followed me…Clint, they would’ve killed you. They would’ve killed _me_.” She bites her lip. “I promised I would keep you safe.”

Clint closes his eyes, unable to shake the feeling of being slighted and angry. “Hill told me the same thing,” he says gruffly after a moment. “Tried to talk me out of following you, said you didn’t want to be found.”

“I figured she might,” Natasha says with a thin smile that tells him that although she hadn’t exactly told their former superior to say those words, they were going to come out anyway. “But you found the file, then.”

“Yeah.” Clint nods. “Did you give that to Stark, or did he find it on his own?”

Natasha falls silent. “I gave it to him,” she says finally. “When I had a feeling something might be going on. I wanted him to look into it based on his own experience.”

“Based on his own experience.” Clint pulls his lips together into a frown. “You wanna tell me what the fuck that means, Tash? Because some of us don’t get to read every memo from Fury.”

Natasha shakes her head. “Extremis,” she says bluntly. “You know Extremis. Stark dealt with it, practically created it.”

Clint squints at her, the lines on his forehead becoming more prominent. “But Hill told me that they had no idea how they were able re-create people who looked just like you without them being clones. Or using those masks,” he adds, thinking of the mesh disguise he remembers her telling him about when she went to infiltrate Pierce’s council.

“Probably because Stark was smart enough not to tell her everything he knew,” Natasha responds with a shrug, waving her hand around. “Compartmentalization, remember? The point is, when Aldrich Killian died, we thought that was the end of everything.”

“Cut off one head, two more will take its place,” Clint mutters without thinking about it, and Natasha nods absently.

“The only other person aside from Tony who knew enough to work the code was a scientist named Maya Hansen. One of Killian’s causalities. There was supposed to be no one else.” She pauses. “Obviously, it would seem that’s…not true.”

“Well.” Clint picks up a packet of instant coffee and shakes it into his mug. “We know that Hydra’s been under our nose for years, right? So the question is, what else have they managed to procure while we’re not looking? Who else has been selling our secrets?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha says, and she suddenly looks so distraught that he knows she’s telling the truth. “But I – Clint. People are out there with my face. People are out there _killing_ with my face. I don’t…” She looks down, breaking off. “The world already knows the things I did, the things I’m capable of. I can’t go through all of that again.”

Clint sighs and leans back in his chair before getting up, walking around the table to pull her into a half hug. “I know,” he says gently. “And we’re going to stop it, okay? Like we always do. But you _need_ to tell me everything you know.”

She nods, her face pressed into his thigh, and he wonders if she remembers the time when he told her the same thing, when she was young and scared and when he was holding a bow and arrow to her head. She had believed him then, and he had barely known her.

He has to hope she can believe him now.

 

***

 

“I went to see someone,” Natasha says when they’re in bed later, and she’s double-triple checked the locks one more time. She’s curled up against him, one hand around his waist, and she’s speaking more into his body than into the air but he hears enough to understand. “A man I used to know, someone who I worked with in the past.”

“Is that where these are from?” he asks, his hands skirting over the places he remembers seeing the cuts and bruises on her legs, the ones that he noticed when he first came in and that she’s subsequently tried to hide with the aid of long sweatpants. She nods a little shakily.

“We got into a bit of a fight. Well, a lot of a fight. I ended up having to take him down, but not before I was able to figure out what he knew, so at least the visit wasn’t a total loss.” She manages a bitter laugh, as if trying to make light of a situation he thinks might have been less than pleasant.

“So what _did_ he know?” Clint asks impatiently, and Natasha sits up, letting her hair fall into her face.

“Enough,” she says shortly. “I was able to piece together the rest from the information I got. Seems the bunker that they’ve been using for these experiments is a few miles out of Alexandria.”

“Virginia.” Clint shakes his head, pausing and furrowing his brow. “Seriously?”

“Well, no one ever said Hydra would be smart,” Natasha responds cynically. “Plus, it makes sense. Pierce was there, and Hydra was more or less operating out of S.H.I.E.L.D. for years through their official headquarters. Depending on who was in on the project, it would have been easy to get funding, to funnel resources through channels and get supplies, not to mention run these tests without anyone thinking they were anything more than grant based research labs.”

“But they sent their clones out anyway,” Clint says, trying to put everything together in his mind. “And that had to attract attention.”

“Only three,” Natasha says, counting on her fingers. “While they’ve figured out more or less _how_ to use Extremis, it’s not an entirely fail safe procedure. Only three successful girls are known according to the documents I’ve gotten. Whether or not there’s more…” she trails off and Clint nods, understanding the implications behind what she seems afraid to say and admit.

“So we find the three.”

“We find the hub,” Natasha corrects, her voice hard. “We go back Virginia, we find their bunker, we take down their experiments so we can stop this before it gets worse. And then we go from there.”

Clint sighs quietly, moving his hand over the back of his neck as his mind starts to race. It’s New York all over again, hell, it’s DC all over again, even in the same goddamn place, with the same kind of consequences, except at least for New York they had S.H.I.E.L.D., and at least for DC she had Fury and Hill.

“You’re aware that we don’t have S.H.I.E.L.D. backup anymore.”

Natasha moves her lips into a straight line and even in the dark he can see the thin white. “Yes.”

“And you know that we’re our own resources? Unless you want to call the others?”

She nods, though her head moves slowly, as if she’s trying to convince herself of her own answer. “Yes.”

Clint sighs, wrapping his fingers around her hand and pulling her close. “You sure you’re up for this?”

“No,” Natasha admits finally, and he can hear the way her voice breaks over the word, like a flood of water crashing over the surf. She turns, and he sees the fear and honesty so usually hidden alive and naked in her gaze. “But if we don’t do it…who will?”

“I was afraid you’d say that,” he replies wryly, tucking her head back underneath his chin, attempting to comfort himself with the feeling of her body, a security he’s missed while she’s been away, more than he would ever probably admit to.

“I know,” Natasha says after a moment, turning her face into his chest, as if she can tell what he’s thinking, as if she needs the same sanctuary he’s craved for days. Clint closes her eyes as the beats of her breath grow increasingly warmer against his bare skin.

“Get some rest,” he murmurs, feeling the vibration of her answer against his sternum, and he feels her press a gentle kiss to her collarbone, so soft it’s almost non-existent.

“You’ve got me now.”

 

***

 

He’s not sure how long he sleeps and he doesn’t even know where he is when he wakes, his eyes opening wide into darkness. There’s an acute pressure in his chest that’s squeezing the air out of his lungs in a way that feels unnatural, and for a moment, with the dark and the dampness on his face and the way his body is tensely straight, he’s convinced that he’s somehow been buried alive.

There’s a barely audible noise next to him, one that cuts through his senses and he jerks his head up, noting the lump on the other side of the bed, the hint of red on the pillow catching light from the glow of a streetlamp outside, which causes something in his brain to snap into alertness.

Natasha. _Natasha_.

He lowers his head, his fingers grabbing for air and coming away with something smooth – sheets, those are sheets, he realizes, running fingers over the coarse material – and breathing comes easier, then, quiet gasps in an otherwise silent night.

It would figure, out all of the times he’s been alone without her since New York, that his brain would choose _now_ to retaliate, at the point when they both were in compromising positions and away from some semblance of their normal life. He swings himself out of bed on shaky legs, steadying himself against the bedside table, turning his head as he does so. Natasha’s still form is in the same position as before, curled up on her side with her breathing deep and even and uninterrupted.

He’s not surprised to stumble into the bathroom, flick on the light and find the angry marks on his arm, the few lines of red blood trickling down from where his fingernails have slashed into his skin. _That’s the thing about post-traumatic stress_ , Clint notes grimly, grabbing a tissue and wetting it under the faucet. It’s always the same goddamn triggers and the same goddamn memories. Every. Single. Time.

In the privacy of the bathroom, he lets his legs give out, propping himself up against the toilet bowl as he dabs at the cuts on his arm. The fact that Natasha opens the door not five minutes later makes him wonder how long she was pretending to be asleep, if she was ever really asleep at all.

“You’re hurt,” she says gently, dropping down beside him and taking the tissue from his still shaking hand.

He silently moves his head back and forth while trying to find his voice. “I’m fine.”

Natasha frowns, getting up to grab a towel, dampening it and sitting down next to him again. “You haven’t had a bad dream like that in awhile,” she says quietly, pressing the cloth to his left arm. He swallows.

“Figures.”

She finishes wiping the blood from the cuts he’s inflicted on himself, her hands skirting over the scrapes to make sure there’s no lasting damage other than surface wounds that will scab over and join what Clint knows are the other fading bruises that map the course of his healing, before shifting so that she can lean against him, wrapping her arms around his waist.

“You want to talk about it?”

He doesn’t, but he knows he will anyway, because if not, she’ll more or less make him. He leans into her hold, trying to ignore the way he knows his pulse is rapidly throbbing against her skin.

“It’s the same thing, every time,” he says quietly. “I’m on the bridge. You’re there with me. I’m fighting you and I’m using everything I’ve ever learned in order to kill you.” He stops and she takes his hand, and he knows he doesn’t have to finish the sentence, because he knows that she knows exactly what he’s going to say.

“But you didn’t kill me,” Natasha continues gently, running a hand up his back. “I’m right here. And so are you. I’m real and this is real...and he’s not in your mind anymore, Clint.”

He nods, unsure of what else to say, because the knowledge or the admission of information isn’t new to either of them, nor are the scratches on his arms, the way he knows he had torn at his own body during sleep thinking that it was her skin he was destroying. The feeling is the same, though, the coursing terror and the fact that he hasn’t been able to forget the fact that maybe, _maybe_ , there was nothing stopping Loki from coming back and compromising him again when he wasn’t looking.

“He’s not in your mind anymore,” Natasha repeats, murmuring the words quietly against his ear, a different kind of throbbing that joins his erratic pulse. “And I’m right here.”

Clint lets her words settle in his brain, feeling his heartbeat slow as she continues to breathe against his skin, and when the tears finally come he doesn’t bother to hide them. Natasha says nothing, just traces a finger down the side of his face, drawing lingering patterns against his skin, the water from his eyes staining her hands.

“I’m always right here.”


	4. Chapter 4

They leave slightly later than they’ve initially planned the next morning, after Natasha has let Clint sleep off his nightmare, after she’s made him eat and drink and convinced herself that he can function on his own. By the time they start the eight-hour drive back to the DC area, it’s past two in the afternoon.

“You’re nervous,” Natasha observes after eating her way through a bag of organic chips, watching the way his fingers tighten around the steering wheel as they speed through Delaware. Clint laughs a little apprehensively, his voice a loud bark in the silence of the vehicle.

“Yeah, we’re going to take on a Hydra base by ourselves, no back-up, and no one knows exactly how many people we have to stop. Why the hell would I be nervous?”

Natasha turns her head towards the window and takes her feet off the dash slowly as she crumples the now empty bag into a tight ball.

“We may have back-up,” she says, and Clint gives her a sideways glance as he frowns.

“I’m going to skip the part where I ask why you never mentioned this before now and instead ask what you mean,” he replies, moving his eyes back to the road. Natasha sighs.

“Sam Wilson.”

Clint makes a small noise, changing lanes while glancing in the rearview mirror, thinking back to what Natasha had told him after she came home. “Yeah, what about him?”

“Well, if he’s got his wings repaired and hasn’t left with Rogers yet, he could be an asset.” She brushes a few crumbs off the seat as she talks. “Tony doesn’t use his suits anymore – at least, not in the way that he used to – and Sam knows Hydra. He knows what we could be up against, and he’s had experience fighting someone who was worse than potentially anyone that we could meet in that bunker.”

Clint chews on his bottom lip while she talks, staring at the road ahead, at the street signs and trucks that speed by. “You know that I’m not going to turn down back-up,” he says finally. “But I’m also going to need more to go on than ‘let’s just add a friend to this joyride.’ Like, a face-to-face meeting or something.”

“Well, conveniently, we’re going to DC,” Natasha says, throwing her hand at the window with a smile, and placing her legs on the dash again.

“And conveniently, I also have his address.”

 

***

 

Sam, as if turns out, has not left for “The Great American Road Trip to Find Bucky Barnes” – at least, that’s how he phrases his answer when he lets them both inside, after getting over what Clint figures is more than a slight shock at seeing them on his doorstep.

“Didn’t think you’d be coming back here so soon, what with Hydra still around and all,” Sam says, leading them into the kitchen and hopping onto the counter. “Can’t say I’m not glad to see you, though.”

“It’s not by choice,” Natasha explains, shoving a folder into his hand and moving back to stand next to Clint. Sam takes the file cautiously and starts to flip through it, emitting a sharp breath. From the way Natasha flinches, Clint wonders if it the reaction wasn’t far off from her own the first time she saw what was inside.

“Well, you can’t say they’re not smart,” Sam says finally, throwing the folder down onto the floor. “Though, man. They never quit, do they?”

“If they quit, that would mean they allowed us to win – and you know that’s never going to happen,” Clint says wryly, finally speaking up for the first time and offering out his hand. “Clint Barton.”

“Sam Wilson, though I imagine you already got that,” Sam replies with a nod, returning the gesture. “Heard a lot about you.”

Clint gives Natasha a sideways glance but she doesn’t look back, instead keeping her gaze trained in Sam’s direction as he hops off the counter and starts to rummage through his cupboards.

“I need to know if you’ve managed to repair your wings.”

“Not so much me as a lot of other people who know the ins and outs of mechanics, but yeah, they’re functional again,” Sam says as he pours two cups of coffee, and Natasha lets out a breath.

“Good.”

“Yeah, good is all relative until you tell me what you’re up to and why you’re so happy about that,” he continues, placing the mugs in front of them. Natasha reaches for one instantly, letting her hands curl around the porcelain.

“There’s a bunker a few miles out of Alexandria, about five miles north of where Pierce’s house was,” she says, taking out a map and flattening it across the table as Sam sits down. “That’s where Hydra has set up base for their experiments. We’re going to destroy it, and any remaining evidence that they have that would allow them to continue to do this somewhere else.”

Sam raises his eyebrows slowly, letting out a low whistle before flicking his gaze over to Clint, who is staring at his cup as if he’s trying to avoid the conversation all together.

“That’s a pretty tall order for two people with no back-up.”

“Tell me about it,” Clint says sardonically. He takes a drink, and Sam does a small double take, as if seeing him clearly for the first time.

“You support her in this?”

“I support her in everything,” Clint replies without hesitation, reaching for Natasha’s fingers and tightening his grip. Sam looks down at their entwined hands and then leans forward, taking a sip of his own coffee before finding their eyes again.

“Alright. When do we start?”

 

***

 

While Sam goes to retrieve his wings from the storage space he’s kept them locked away in, he leaves Natasha and Clint to their own devices. While Natasha’s not sure if the alone time is meant to be intentional or not, she doesn’t really dwell on it – they could use some quiet, she thinks, the kind of lull she’s used to experiencing before taking on a more dangerous mission, or one that could potentially have severe ramifications. She also hasn’t missed the tiredness in Clint’s eyes, the way he’s let down his guard in the absence of Sam’s presence, the slow walk that signals he’s more tired mentally than he would ever admit to. Though they’d both gotten a decent amount of sleep after his nightmare interruption, Natasha knows it isn’t nearly enough to compensate for all of their running around, and there hasn’t been enough downtime to truly allow their bodies to recuperate.

“You were here before,” Clint observes, pulling down the covers on the bed. It’s not a question, and Natasha figures that he’s known as much since she walked into the house, probably since she had given him the address, not to mention what she had told him while he was away. She nods, sitting down next to him.

“We came here after the explosion in Jersey. Didn’t have anywhere else to go.” She pauses, letting the images settle in her mind. “I sat here. I sat here and Steve…he sat there,” she says, pointing to the chair across the room, and Clint shoves his hand in his pockets as she talks.

“He asked me if I was okay,” she continues, punctuating the sentence with a laugh that sounds bitter and sad all at once. “I didn’t know how to feel, you know? How do you react…what do you say to someone when you’ve just found out that everything in your life is more or less a lie? When you’ve almost just died?”

“Got me,” Clint says hoarsely, and the situation feels so achingly familiar to another time that they had both felt alone and lost and vulnerable, causing Natasha to lean her head into his shoulder.

“I’ll never forget that feeling,” she says softly. “That feeling of knowing everything I had done, everything that I had worked for and believed in, was all for nothing. That feeling of not knowing who I was supposed to trust. He saved me when he could’ve left me for dead and I…I don’t know if I would’ve done the same for him.” She shifts against his body, blinking back tears she knows she can’t hide.

“Hey,” Clint says firmly, and she feels him tug on her hand until she raises her head again. “You know that’s not true. And we’re going to figure out this Hydra thing, you and me.” He draws one hand around her shoulder, until she’s pressed against him as much as she can be without being in his lap. “I promise.”

Natasha shakes her head. “You act like there’s still a Strike Team: Delta,” she says, trying to push her voice to be steady even while it breaks, and Clint shrugs, a faint smile ghosting over his lips.

“Who said there wasn’t?”

 

***

 

The drive from Sam’s house to where Natasha has mapped out the coordinates of the bunker is roughly a forty-five minute trek, but they take the back roads anyway, more out of the habit of increased paranoia from previous events than anything else, not to mention the fact that Natasha has pointed out there could very well be trackers anywhere along the trail, if Hydra has been smart enough to realize that their hiding place would eventually draw them visitors.

“Tell me again how this whole thing is going to work,” Sam says from the back seat as Clint weaves through the small roads, jerking to a stop every so often at a red light. “Because I get the feeling we’re all just flying by the seat of our pants here – pun intended, by the way.”

Natasha cranes her neck, but doesn’t turn around.

“We go in from the back – there’s an entrance that they use to smuggle stuff out of, and we can use that to gain access without them becoming too aware. Clint and I will take the ground level and work our way across the premises. You’ll be in the air.” She turns back, catching his eye in the rearview mirror.

“Once inside, there are most likely going to be trackers and cameras everywhere. Armed guards, too, possibly hidden. We need to do what we did when we attacked the Helicarriers – assume everyone in that bunker is Hydra and take out as many people as we can before they become aware.”

“When we get to the main room, our first priority is containment,” Clint continues, picking up seamlessly from where Natasha leaves off without breaking conversation. “Destroy the machines and any evidence, and then work on any subjects that you might come across. Don’t attack them or engage with them unless they give you a reason to. There’s a chance we’ll need them alive so they can tell us what they know.”

“And then what?” Sam asks cautiously, and Natasha notices that he’s trying not to sound overly skeptical. “We kill a bunch of Hydra agents and then fly away like superheroes, hoping not to get caught?”

“We’ll figure that part out later,” Natasha says curtly, feeling her shoulders tense against her will. “Right now, let’s just focus on the part where we get in and stop them.”

Sam leans back in the seat as Natasha finishes talking, letting out a sigh.

“You know, I thought Rogers was gonna be the one to send me on a high stakes mission again,” he says after a moment, a wry grin shadowing his face. “Didn’t expect a couple of spies to draw me back into the game.”

“No one did,” Natasha says quietly, and although Sam’s tone had been teasing, she can’t help the fear that laces her voice, taking Clint’s hand again.

 

***

 

They park off the road, driving a good mile or so onto the grass, until the vehicle is fully hidden behind a large tree. Natasha gets out of the car, stretching her muscles as she gathers her supplies and loads rounds on her gun.

“You think you can get us both in the air if we need an extraction?” she asks as she finishes fiddling with her comm, handing Sam his own. He smiles.

“Man, I learned from Rogers. And I’m figuring the two of you will probably equal a little less than one of him in his suit.”

Natasha smiles a little, looking down at the ground as she secures the wrist gauntlets underneath her jacket cuff, flexing the charges on her widow’s bite.

“You have a history,” Sam says after a moment, stepping closer and motioning to Clint who Natasha notices is standing a few yards away, taking some practice shots. Natasha nods absently.

“We saved each other,” she says simply, knowing that she doesn’t have to elaborate, that Sam will understand that more than he’ll ever let on. “He was supposed to kill me once, and he didn’t. I was supposed to hate him once and…” She trails off, watching his back as he releases another arrow. “And I didn’t,” she finishes. “I wanted an enemy, and I got a partner instead.”

“Just a partner?” Sam asks with an eyebrow raise, and Natasha feels the corner of her lips tug upwards.

“No. But you know that.”

“Not hard to tell,” Sam says, locking the straps of the wings over his middle. “Reminds me of the way I was with Riley. We were so close, we might’ve grown up together. Knew stuff about each other no one else did. Trusted each other more than we trusted our own families. I woulda died with him, if I was that kinda person.”

“Yeah,” Natasha says quietly, sticking her gun into her holster and thinking of Loki and of S.H.I.E.L.D. “Me too.” She continues to stare straight ahead, feeling Sam’s eyes on her body.

“This thing that you’re doing – that’s he’s doing,” Sam says slowly. “It’s a choice for him, the same way it was a choice for Riley to follow me into what I wanted to do. It’s important, him being here with you.” He stops, as if to let his words sink in properly. “Don’t take it for granted, okay?”

Natasha nods a little numbly and Sam turns away while she continues outfitting herself with weapons, her gaze skirting every so often to Clint, the way he fires without really thinking about it.


	5. Chapter 5

The bunker is set not far from the main road, which Sam maps out for them from the short flyover he’s allowed himself to take. Splitting up after having left their hiding space on the side of the road causes Clint to feel a lot like he did in the old days, when he would drag Natasha into missions that were probably too dangerous for him alone, but not for both of them together.

“What are you think about?” she asks as if reading his mind, as they make their way slowly across the grass. He catches her sidelong glance, returning it.

“Cairo, 2010,” he says after a moment. “The way that guy looked, after you almost broke his neck.”

“Is that all you think about?” Natasha asks, more lightly than he thinks the moment deserves. “The way I look when I kill someone?”

“Yeah, well.” Clint kicks at a piece of dirt on the ground as they approach the end of the green. “Beats thinking about myself in these situations.”

He’s prepared for a response, but he’s not entirely prepared for Natasha to turn and fix her gaze on him, looking suddenly overly serious.

“You’re not going to fall apart on me in there, are you?”

Clint falters mid-step, but steadies himself and shakes his head. “I’ve been back on active duty for over a year with no incidents,” he returns. The words feel like a lie considering he knows that he wouldn’t call active PTSD and nightmares _no incidents_ but he also knows she understands what he means – that she’s seen him in action enough to believe him, and also that as much as she would never do something like this alone, she would never draw him out into the line of fire if she didn’t believe he could handle it. Natasha doesn’t answer, though, and he stops walking altogether, moving to where she’s rooted, frozen in the middle of the road.

“Natasha.”

“You can’t fall apart on me in there,” she insists, her voice tight. “Because I can’t do this alone.”

“Natasha,” Clint repeats, putting a hand on her shoulder as he finds her eyes, hearing the ripple of fear, the emotion she’s trying so hard to suppress.

“Promise me,” she says with the same desperate tone, and he tightens his grip on her arm.

“Do you need to hear me say it?” he asks and Natasha nods, swallowing.

“Yes.”

Clint nods back, and there’s something almost nakedly pure about her need to hear a verbal reassurance when they’ve always relied on trusting each other through nonverbal confirmations that no one else would be able to pick up.

“The answer is no. I’m not going to fall apart on you. You know that I’ve got your back.”

He holds her gaze until he sees her pupils grow smaller, until she finally looks away, her stance relaxing, indicating her acceptance of his words.

“Good.”

“If you two are finished having a moment, you might want to think about moving,” Sam cuts in suddenly, his deep voice snaking into their comms and making them both jump. “A bunch of guys just left by way of that back entrance – and they got the door open.”

Natasha grabs Clint’s hand and squeezes it once before picking up pace, while Clint’s feet pound into the hard ground.

 

***

 

If fate was something that Natasha actually believed in, at least, moreso than the way it had affected her life after the Red Room, she would have thanked whoever decided to give them the convenient exit of a few soldiers making another delivery at the exact time they planned to try to infiltrate the surroundings. As it is, she hears Clint mutter something about gods and luck as they both manage to slip quietly inside the door before it slams shut behind them, plunging them both into near blackness.

Natasha presses herself to the wall, camouflaging her body as much as she can in the shadows and watching Clint do the same. As she lets her eyes adjust to the dark, she stills her movements, listening for any sign of attack or for recognition that they’ve been spotted.

Natasha lets three full minutes of nothing pass before she breathes out slowly and deliberately, signaling once to Clint with two fingers before moving away from the wall and starting to move through the complex.

As she rounds the corner of a hallway, she finds herself silently repeating his words from earlier. It’s part paranoia, she knows, in the wake of S.H.I.E.L.D.’s fall, and part everything that she’s still trying to process about the very personal way Hydra has more or less violated the courage she had fought so hard to sacrifice. He has her back, and he’s had it for months with no problem – while they hadn’t been out on overly serious missions together in the span of two years, while Loki might still linger in the edges of his mind for an undetermined amount of time (and, Natasha thinks grimly, for the rest of his life), she also knows she’s never doubted that Clint could take care of her if he needed to.

_And yet…_

A scuffling to her left makes her jump but there’s a soft twang and then a thump in the otherwise noiseless room before she can even turn. Natasha rotates to see a man slumped over the side of rail, his gun clattering to the floor from his now useless hand, an arrow sticking neatly from his middle. She raises her head to meet Clint’s eyes, his fingers still attached to his bowstring, his stance defensive and poised.

“Thanks,” she mouths, and Clint thins his lips, squeezing her hand once as he moves past her through the complex.

She keeps her gun raised and one eye on his moving form, somewhat surprised at the fact that the place seems more or less deserted. Her curiosity lasts for about five seconds longer before she hears the unmistakable sound of a gunshot, causing her to duck towards the ground just in time as she screams at Clint to do the same.

He swears loudly, all semblance of their cover blown, throwing himself against the wall as a rainfall of bullets start from somewhere above them, and the screams on the other end of the room confirm her distant prediction that the stray shots are embedding themselves in what she assumes are less fortunate Hydra agents. A hand grabs her from behind, pulling her back roughly, and she immediately uses her own strength to flip the offender forward while shoving one of her wrists against his neck, watching as he writhes and then stills underneath the zap of her widow’s bite.

She ducks behind a concrete pillar and lets her own shots fire, watching as one of Clint’s trick arrows zooms past in her peripheral vision, the spark and scream as it hits its target alerting her that he it must have been one of his electrical ones. From somewhere above her, she hears the yell of Sam’s voice, sees bodies falling that she assumes and then hopes are casualties of his own fight.

“You okay?” Clint yells over the gunfire, turning his head a fraction of an inch to allow their their eyes to meet before moving his attention back to another agent, who has seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

“Clint!”

“I got it,” he grunts as his bow falls to the floor and he manages to grab an arrow from his quiver, sticking it deep into his attacker’s stomach. It’s a regular pointy end stick as opposed to a more advanced one, but Clint’s aim is on target, and when the man lets out a scream of pain, Clint punches him in the face until he goes limp, crawling off the body and groping in the dark for his bow.

“Sam, let me know how you’re doing!”

She hears a grunt in response, the sound of returning gunfire, and then another grunt and a strangled yell.

“You got more agents here than you know what to do with!” Sam shouts back, his voice sounding strangled and, at the same time, Natasha thinks, strangely exhilarated. “Go, keep going. Gonna try to keep them off your tail.”

She can just make out the silver flash of Sam’s wings as he shoots his own guns from overhead, and makes a split second decision to use the cover in order to make a run for it, despite the fight that still rages around them. Natasha grabs Clint’s hand as she turns to shoot again, putting a bullet between another assailant’s eyes, though not before a sharp stabbing pain hits her seemingly out of nowhere, a hot stinging sensation that feels like a punch in the cut, robbing her of breath. She stumbles forward as Clint takes another two arrows and fires them both in one shot, impaling the body of the man hidden in the shadows that they had both missed.

“Go, go!” Clint yells as they approach the large door at the end of the hall. Even without her injuries she thinks he would’ve made it there faster thanks to his long strides, and as he slams the heavy door shut behind them, the shouts and yells become slightly more distant.

“The control room,” Natasha says, struggling to get her breath back, feeling Clint’s eyes as they stare her down, knowing what the wetness of her shirt means.

“Natasha –”

“Clint, I’ve had worse. You’ve had worse.”

She prays that he won’t argue back and is silently thankful when he doesn’t, but she also knows that it’s the first thing he’s going to worry about for the rest of the fight. She closes her eyes briefly, trying to will away the pain, attempting to steady herself on legs that she can already feel shaking. He can worry about taking care of her all he wants, she decides as she fights to regain composure. Hell, at this point, she thinks that she might be glad to let him play doctor, but she knows that if she wants to get out of here with any accomplishment that she can’t let him see her vulnerability.

“Why aren’t they coming after us?” Clint asks tightly, turning his gaze towards the door, and she can tell from the way he’s holding his bow that he’s still on guard.

“I don’t know,” Natasha admits, because she doesn’t, and the whole thing makes no sense, because all her instincts and sources indicated that they should have been walking into a suicide trap, not something that could probably be classified as a normal Strike Team: Delta mission. She hears Clint sigh beside her.

“Sam –”

“Can take care of himself, worst case, he flies himself out of there and waits for us to call for extraction,” she interrupts, moving away from the wall, gritting her teeth against the pain in her side. “Come here and help me find the control room.”

Clint follows her slowly and for a moment, things are as quiet as they were when they first entered the building. When he helps her push open another smaller door, she’s not entirely sure what she expects. She knew enough from her research about the side effects of Extremis gone wrong, but there’s nothing orange or yellow that she can see, only prone bodies against the wall, each one strapped upright into what looks like some sort of brace. Natasha inches closer, unable to tell whether they’re still alive or not, while Clint remains at her back with his bow raised.

Natasha stifles a scream when she comes face to face with what looks like herself, red hair and all, and Clint grabs her roughly before swinging her around. She bites down on the fear and the pain in her side and Clint digs his fingers into her shoulder, their eyes locking together, their immediate danger, for the moment, forgotten.

“Stay with me,” he says, his voice low. “Natasha. Stay with me. You _know_ this isn’t you.”

She breathes in slowly, trying to ground herself in his words while she pulls away. “I know,” she says, more to reassure herself than anything else, and he lets her go while she turns around again. Natasha allows herself to inspect the bodies as much as she feels comfortable with, trying not to pay attention to the fact that it involves staring at her own slack face, and her own dead eyes.

“Clint,” she says softly when she reaches the last one, motioning to a bank of computers and he moves closer, lowering his bow as he reaches her side. The monitors themselves look stone-age old, large hulking monsters cluttered with a stash of printouts that are riddled with numbers and data. On one of the screens, there’s a single beeping red dot, as if someone has left it on, inviting them to find its contents.

“What do you think?” Clint asks quietly, and Natasha shakes her head.

“Whoever was here seems to have left it abandoned. Or, more likely, they wanted us to find it,” Natasha says, picking up the printouts and folding them up. She hands them to Clint, who shoves them as neatly as he can into his pockets and then frowns.

“Something’s not right.”

Natasha swallows, trying to ignore the increasing pain and the way she can feel the blood leaking from the wound in her side. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, this doesn’t seem like Hydra’s style,” Clint responds, looking around. “To lay low and just scatter breadcrumbs like they’re luring us somewhere?”

“That’s how we found Zola,” Natasha says, reaching over to move her fingers across the computer keys. Nothing on the screen changes, however, except for a large amount of red text that shows up in blocks, replacing the previously glowing red dot.

“Can’t do anything,” she says with a tinge of frustration. “Code’s already overwritten at least ten times over. Must be made to withstand even my hacking.” She smiles grimly, raising her eyes. “I don’t – I can’t get at it at all.”

“Not like the code on the flash drive?” Clint asks, and Natasha shakes her head, furrowing her brow.

“No, this is different. This…” She trails off and then stops, her eyes suddenly widening. “Clint, we have to go.”

“What –”

“We have to go,” she repeats desperately, pulling at his hand.

“Natasha, I don’t –” He breaks off as the computer starts to blink rapidly, a sharp whine emitting from the system signaling a warning that would be impossible for anyone to miss, or know the meaning behind.

“ _Fuck_.”

Clint beelines back towards the door, prying it open as the sound of gunfire starts to mingle with the computer noise, and raises his wrist to his mouth.

“Sam, we need extraction now!”

There’s an uproar somewhere above them, and Natasha realizes that Sam must be still taking out the various Hydra agents, a never ending barrage of assailants that seem to be coming out of nowhere.

“Right behind you, but you gotta give me a second.”

“We don’t have a second!” Natasha yells back, praying he hears the desperation in her voice as a new wave of pain slicing through her side. She cries out, caught off guard by the discomfort as Clint steadies her, pressing her against the wall and shielding her with his body.

“Get us now!” Clint yells as she makes herself as small as she can against him, feeling the warmth of her own blood as it stains her skin, and then in another second there’s a sharp pull, and another strong arm wrapped around her upper chest.

“Hold on, I got you.”

Sam speeds upwards and Natasha closes her eyes as all three of them ascend through the now desecrated roof, spiraling into the sky as the bunker explodes behind them in a beautiful array of orange and gold and red.


	6. Chapter 6

When they finally make it back to their designated hideout spot, Sam landing a few paces away so that they can move without being entirely seen, Natasha lets Clint grab her by the shoulders, helping her to limp slowly to the car, where she eases herself down on the grass.

“You gonna make a habit of bleeding out when we go do stuff together?” Sam asks with a frown, nodding towards Clint who is busy grabbing spare shirts from his bag in the trunk.

“I’d like not to, actually,” Natasha grits as Clint presses the clothes to her side, wincing at the pressure of his hand. “Clint, I’m fine.”

“No, you’re not,” he returns, though she notices that his voice is less stifled than it was in the bunker. “But the good news is, I don’t think that the cut’s deep enough for stitches. Just a pretty nice gash by a Hydra agent who apparently doesn’t know much about how to wield a knife.” He frowns, sighing. “If you can keep pressure on it for awhile, it’ll be okay until I can bandage it properly when we get somewhere safe.”

Natasha obeys, pressing the shirts as hard as she dares against the cut. “What happened in there?” she asks as Clint stands up, trying to ignore the way her head is spinning and the way the shirt is darkening with red.

“Exactly what you saw,” Sam interjects, folding his arms, and Natasha notices the deep scratches along his elbows as he does so. “A whole lotta fighting. Couple of them tried to get at my wings, but they could only go so far. Managed to hold most of them off, the rest scattered. Not sure where.” Natasha watches as his eyes travel over both of them. “Did you guys find the control room?”

“Kind of,” Natasha grunts, and Sam raises an eyebrow.

“What do you mean, _kind of_?”

Natasha shrugs as much as she can. “We found the room, but there was no one inside. Or rather, the only things inside were some dead test subjects, a bunch of print outs and a computer rigged to explode when you tried to unlock it.”

“But you destroyed it, right?” Sam asks slowly, raising an eyebrow. “I mean, that was the explosion that we caused?”

“The computer destroyed itself, which means that the bunker destroyed itself as well,” Natasha says tiredly, remembering New Jersey. “Like a failsafe.” She glances over at Clint, feeling slightly helpless and for the first time in a long time, completely blank. “I don’t know where we go from here.”

Sam rocks back and forth on his heels as all three of them fall into silence, and Natasha wonders if Clint’s not talking because he doesn’t want to agree with her, or because of something else entirely. She ignores the feeling in the pit of her stomach, shifting the bundle of shirts on her side.

“You go take care of yourself,” Sam says after a moment, and Natasha looks up. “You get some rest, take some time to yourselves, get that wound looked at it and cleaned up. And then after, if you still wanna do this, you know where to find me.”

Natasha shakes her head. “You’ve done enough,” she says with a small smile, struggling to get to her feet. “Really.” She pauses, glancing over at Clint, and to Sam. “I think Steve needs your help more than I do.”

Sam doesn’t respond, staying quiet as Clint dumps his arrows and the rest of his gear into the trunk of the car, finally giving a small, sad smile back.

“You take care of yourself, Romanoff. Next time you come knocking on my door, it better be because you want a real breakfast.”

Natasha laughs in spite of herself as Sam leans over to kiss her gently on the cheek. When she pulls away she finds Clint at her side, and he grabs Sam’s hand, shaking it firmly.

“Thanks for the help. You’re not too bad for a bird with metal wings.”

Sam grins, giving Clint a brief nod. “Well, you ain’t so bad either, for a bird with a bow,” he admits, still smiling. “By the way, lemme know if you ever wanna train together sometime. Could use someone like you when I take these things out.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Clint says, dropping his hand. “Good luck, Wilson.”

“Good luck, Barton.”

Sam salutes once before shooting upwards into the air, and Natasha follows his movement until he’s little more than a speck against a blue, cloudless sky.

 

***

 

The motel that they stop at is in Maryland, what Clint considers a safe enough distance from the Hydra bunker and also as far as he’s willing to drive without proper attention to Natasha’s injury. He leaves her in the car while he takes care of checking in, and then drives around to the front door of their room for easy access.

“Just like home,” Clint mutters when he walks inside, noting the badly patterned comforter, a mold-colored carpet and two lamps, one of which he’s assuming doesn’t work based on the way its bulb is cracked down the middle, like a jagged strike of lightening. When he turns around, he’s surprised to find Natasha still lingering by the door, as if she’s uncharacteristically afraid.

“They’re not going to come after us,” he says finally, when he notices how stiff her body is despite her injury, recognizing the fear behind her actions. “At least, not yet.”

“You don’t know that,” Natasha says quietly and Clint sighs, walking back across the room.

“You’re right. I don’t. But I also know that if something were to happen, it would’ve happened when we left, or right after we escaped. I think we’ve got ourselves a reprieve for now.”

She looks up, her eyes bright with tears of both pain and exhaustion, and Clint lets his gaze soften further, putting one arm around her shoulder and squeezing it gently. “Come on. Let’s get you cleaned up, okay?”

He counts it as a victory that she lets him guide her into the bathroom without protest, settling herself on the toilet in silence while he cleans out the wound more thoroughly. As he steps back, he notices the ash settling into her hair, the dirt on her arms and neck that he knows mirrors the grime on his own skin.

“You think you’re okay to shower?”

She nods silently as she stands up and he reaches over to run the water, helping her under the spray. She leans heavily against him while he massages the area around her scalp, working his way down her arms, rubbing dirt and blood off of her skin, and the whole thing seems too similar to the way they used to regroup when they were hurt on an assignment, when they needed the closeness that they couldn’t be afforded in the field. Once he’s finished getting her as clean as he thinks she’ll allow, he runs his own body under the water, until he’s feeling sufficiently more alive and a little less grimy.

“Hurting?” he asks, as he steps out of the shower, using his own towel to wipe her down before rummaging through the first aid kit, securing a bandage tightly to her side.

Natasha shrugs listlessly. “No worse than I can handle.”

Clint walks back into the room and rummages through his duffel bag until he finds some extra clothes, handing her a pair of sweatpants and an old archery tee shirt.

“Here,” he says, slipping on his boxers. “Figured you’d be more comfortable in something loose.”

Natasha swallows, taking them from his hand before dressing slowly, climbing onto the bed and over the covers when she’s done. Clint shuts the blinds and then inspects the lock on the door, fiddling with it a few times before giving it a sharp pull.

“Tracker should alert us if anyone without my fingerprints tries to enter,” Clint says finally, flicking the lights off. Natasha makes a small sound as he crawls into bed next to her.

“Thanks.”

“Thank Tony,” Clint says with a small smile. “He’s the one who insisted I come out here with at least a few Stark gadgets just in case.”

He sees Natasha smile faintly in the dark but she doesn’t continue the conversation, and he wraps an arm around her in response, tugging her close.

“What’s going on?”

She swallows, and through the thin clothing, he can feel the way she’s tensed. “I can’t get it out of my mind,” she says softly. “I could deal with the pictures…the knowledge. But seeing it – seeing my face…”

“It’s like watching a ghost,” Clint finishes, remembering the way the S.H.I.E.L.D. therapist had forced him to watch surveillance videos of himself on the Helicarrier during Loki’s attack, how it had made him feel and how it had taken him days to shake the sensation.

“Yeah,” she admits, her fingers playing with the covers. “A nightmare. Except you can’t wake up from it because –”

“Because there’s nothing to wake up from,” Clint finishes quietly. She laughs a little into his shirt, and he both hears and feels the start of a sob from somewhere in the back of her throat.

“We’re a mess,” she mutters, and Clint smiles wryly.

“Aren’t we always?”

“I guess.” Natasha edges up in the bed, away from his body, and for the first time he can see her face clearly, even in the dark shadows, the way she suddenly seems drawn and meek. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I ran away like that. I should’ve…I should’ve told you.”

Clint lets out a long breath, trying to figure out how to respond, what he should say versus what he _wants_ to say. “Yeah,” he says, because he knows that if there’s one thing they can give each other no matter what the situation is, it’s honesty. “You should’ve told me. I was angry.”

“You had a right to be,” Natasha responds tightly as Clint shakes his head.

“I did. But after all of this, I don’t blame you. You just wanted to protect me, right?” He wipes a stray hair from her forehead, letting the tips of his fingers trail across her skin. “That part of it, I get. And I would’ve done the same.”

Natasha leans back into his side, pressing her face against his chest. “That’s the problem, you know. After Fury…” She pauses, and he takes note of the way she’s trying to compose herself. “I used to say things like that all the time. That I did things because I had to do them, no matter who I was doing them to. I used to not care. But I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to be the person who lies to everyone they love.”

“So why did you do it then?” Clint asks, not unkindly, and when Natasha speaks again her voice wavers slightly.

“Because you wouldn’t have come after me. I thought if I gave you a trail – left you to your own devices, maybe, you would have a choice, and maybe you wouldn’t bother.”

“What?” Clint can’t help the surprise in his tone as he pulls back abruptly with a frown. “Of course I would have,” he continues a little sharply. “Why wouldn’t – why would you _ever_ think that I wouldn’t do this with you?”

“Because.” Natasha stops and sighs. “Because look at what I’ve dragged you into, Clint. You don’t deserve this. And I never wanted my demons to be a part of your life. Not anymore than they had to be, anyway.”

“Like I don’t have my own?” he asks pointedly, thinking of his nightmares, of the way he knows he’s destroyed himself and sometimes, he thinks, her as well. Natasha swallows.

“I never wanted to be that selfish.”

“Who the hell is talking about being selfish? We’re _partners_ ,” Clint returns a little impatiently. “And you’re my best friend. We’re a part of each other’s lives, the good _and_ the bad.”

“I know,” she amends, but he can tell by her voice that she doesn’t really believe him. Clint relaxes back onto the bed, pulling her close again, while being careful of her injured side.

“Look, it’s okay to have demons,” he says after a moment, putting his face by her own, letting his lips trace her skin gently. “Isn’t that what you always tell me?”

“Yes,” Natasha agrees hesitantly, and he can feel her shaking against him. “But knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to accept.”

Clint sighs, stroking her hair, the weight of the day and of the past few weeks pressing in on his chest. “I know,” he admits, tucking himself underneath her and shielding her from her own terrors the only way he’s ever known.

 

***

 

Natasha wakes mostly from pain, the dull throbbing in her side sending her brain into alertness before her senses register the comforting smell permeating the room. She turns over as carefully as she can, using her elbows to push herself up in bed, and finds Clint sitting on the edge of the bed. He’s bent over looking at a handful of papers, a small travel mug resting in one hand on his knee, and she can see another one sitting on the bedside table next to her head, arguably the source of the strong aroma.

“Coffee?” Natasha asks a little incredulously, because as far as she remembers, the room isn’t equipped with any kind of device to make some. Clint turns around at her voice, smiling slightly.

“Kind of,” he admits, shifting so that she can see the hot pot plugged into the outlet on the far wall, and the packets of instant Starbucks next to it. Natasha manages a smile.

“Is this compliments of Tony Stark?” she asks as she takes the cup, wincing as the hot liquid burns her tongue. Clint laughs.

“No, this is compliments of Clint Barton, who learned the hard way that most shitty motels don’t have coffee makers.” He moves back on the bed, regarding her carefully and drinking slowly.

“How do you feel?”

She considers her response, not knowing if he wants her to answer on a mental or physical level. “Better,” she says, choosing her words with a little trepidation, because it’s the closest thing she can say that’s not entirely a lie. “And still in pain.”

He nods, handing her a bottle of Advil that she gratefully accepts, swallowing the pills dry before washing them down with another sip of coffee. “What are you reading?” she asks when she’s done, even though she’s pretty sure that she already knows.

“Finally got a chance to look at those papers,” Clint says, and Natasha feels her blood chill at his words. She swallows down the lump in her throat.

“And?”

“And, there’s a lot here that doesn’t make sense. Codes and names and equations that we’ll probably have to take back to Tony.” He shuffles the papers again, and Natasha searches his face until she can’t take the silence anymore.

“What are you not telling me?” she asks finally and when he turns around, his expression is both serious and tired.

“Your intel was only half right. According to these reports, this bunker was abandoned two days before we got there. They left the bodies, had it guarded by Hydra agents just in case, probably for reasons just like this. But as far as I can tell, they’ve already moved on.”

Natasha feels her stomach drop as he finishes talking, the growing realization of the fact that perhaps this entire venture was, in the end, for nothing. For a brief moment, she feels exactly like she did back in Zola’s bunker, when each new piece of information about the lies that had made up her life had been like another punch in the gut.

“Natasha.”

She wills herself out of her haze, struggling to center her mind again, but the emotions barrel through her like a dam that’s been burst wide open in the wake of a final straw that’s pushed it to the point of collapse.

“So whoever was doing this…we didn’t stop it.”

Clint remains silent, rubbing a palm over his jaw. “There’s no way to tell how far they’ve gotten with their research, and I don’t know if they’ve made any other clones successfully.”

Natasha nods and feels him put one hand on her leg, his fingers wrapping around her kneecap.

“Nat…”

“I know what you’re going to say, Clint.” She hates the sound of her voice, the tiredness and defeat, but suddenly she can’t bring herself to care. “You’re going to say that it’s not all for nothing, that we did something good. We found out about this and did our best to stop it.”

“It’s not all for nothing,” he repeats, shaking his head. “That bunker that we destroyed today? It _is_ something good _._ It’s one more place that they can’t return, one more base that they can’t get back. Plus, they know now that they’re not making their plans in secret anymore.”

“But don’t you see?” Natasha asks almost desperately. “It’s like New Jersey all over again. Cut off one head, two more will take its place…they’ll just keep finding places to regroup, to rebuild. They’ll send more weapons out there. They’ll send more of _me_ out there. I’ll keep killing. People will notice. And if we can’t stop them –”

“We will,” Clint interrupts firmly, putting his coffee on the table and grabbing both her shoulders. Natasha smiles sadly, blinking back tears.

“This isn’t your fight.”

“And if you think I’m about to let you go through it alone, you’re insane,” he responds with the same hard edge. “How many times have we done this type of thing together?”

Natasha concentrates on her coffee, before letting out a sigh. “Which part?” she asks miserably, her gaze still downturned. “Helping each other out of traumatic experiences, or chasing after bad guys that are too much for us to handle?”

Clint scoots further up onto the bed, and she lets her head fall onto his shoulder almost instantly.

“The part where we protect each other until there’s no exit strategy,” he says, his voice low. “Like partners do.”

Natasha uses his body to steady herself, closing her eyes. “You really want to do this?” she asks tentatively. “Even if we don’t know what’s out there? Even if we don’t know what we might find?”

“Yes,” Clint emphasizes determinedly, cutting her off before she can continue. “We’re going to get through this, Natasha. We’re going to get through this together, or not at all. And no matter what happens, I want to be there with you.”

Natasha smiles weakly, finding solace in his words, in his touch, in the smell of strong coffee and in the dinginess of the hotel room that feels like a familiar home in the only way it can, given how they’ve lived and what they know of the world.

“I’m glad you’re here,” she says quietly as she curls her hand around his own, fingers pressing gently into his skin, because it’s true, and because she needs him to know it’s true, even though Clint is already leaning over to kiss her, his lips lingering against her skin.

“I’m glad _we’re_ here.”

When he kisses her again it feels like the first real step she’s let herself take in awhile, like the first real shred of belief of the fact that not all is lost, like the first breath of hope in a future littered with things still too uncertain to name.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/kudos are appreciated!


End file.
